


It's not your fault

by Confettibites



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Car Accident, Childhood Memories, Death, Established Relationship, Harringrove, Harringrove Playing Cards, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory, Mentioning of Abuse, Tragedy, Trauma, bad dream, flippys prompt challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 04:06:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13046136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confettibites/pseuds/Confettibites
Summary: Billy remembers his mother in a dream, how she died and how that changed the relationship with his father. He wakes up surrounded by Eleven and Steve who try to comfort him.This was done forFlippys Prompt challenge. I drew the cards 10 of Diamonds (tragedy), 10 of Clubs (a notebook and/or a radio) and 5 of hearts (Eleven).





	It's not your fault

**Author's Note:**

> This is a drabble and it is unbetaed, all mistakes are my own.

Sommers in California were nice. They were hot and Billy vividly remembered the smell of sunblock and hairspray mixed in with the salty hint of the ocean in the air. And he remembered his mom. Blonde, beautiful, tan. Billy already knew she was too good for his father, even when he was a kid. Even if she stayed with him, for Billy she was something like a guardian angel, protecting him from all the evils of this world even before Neil Hargrove became one of them.

Sometimes after school, when Billy's father was at work, she would take him to the beach. They would go sit into her tiny, colorful car that always smelt nice and they would just drive. His mom turned the windows down. She was wearing sunglasses and only a light dress over her bikini. And of course that beautiful pendant necklace she always wore. Billy loved it when they drove somewhere without his dad, without discussing the 'why' behind things they did. 

On rare occasions, Billy's mom would take a different road. She then was telling Billy, they were going on an adventure. Usually, this brought them to a beach he didn't know yet or an ice cream shop. He didn't know if his mother had a destination in her mind when she started driving. He thought she didn't. It was part of these adventures to never quite know where they were heading. Yet the turned out awesome every time and Billy felt good until they got home his father commented on how he should much rather be doing homework than spending the day being lazy. His mother always told Neil that this was her idea and she just wanted to spend some time with her son since he's growing up so fast. Billy always pulled a slightly embarrassed face, but he was so glad she always stood up for him.

Billy and his mom spent whole days collected shells on the beach, trying to find the best ice cream flavor or just go swimming in the warm ocean. Billy never felt as safe as he did when he went to some strange, abroad place, he'd never been before. On the way there they listened to his mom's music and sometimes Billy was drawing or writing in the notebook she'd given him. She had encouraged him to write down important things, to remember them later. Billy wished he would have understood what she meant with that a little earlier.

One afternoon, Billy's mom had picked him up after school. Billy was surprised because he was grounded for bringing home a bad grade in math. His mom told him, they would be home before his father could notice and that he deserved to be treated after working so hard on his homework all week.

Billy had agreed and not even ten minutes later, he was sitting in the passenger seat next to his mom, while she was driving. The seat felt warm underneath him because the sun had been heating it up before. While his mother turned on the radio and a nice song started playing, Billy reached down into his backpack that he had thrown in the footwell and managed to get his notebook out there. He started drawing in it with a pencil as soon as they were out of town and driving along the coastline, around lots of curves and over hills. Later Billy wasn't really sure of what he'd been drawing. It might be his mother. Or the beach. He always drew that. But he could remember when his mom sounded a little frustrated because the old car radio started to make weird sounds, swallowing whole words of the singer. First, she just hit the top of the radio twice. Billy looked up and tried himself, turning up and down the volume. He wasn't sure what exactly happened next, only that when his mother reached over again, something hit the car and there was a loud crashing noise before the car started turning. It wasn't the last hit the car took or the last turn it made. Billy couldn't really tell what happened because he was scared and shut his eyes after the first one. But a moment later he was pulled out of the car by someone that smelt weird. Like gasoline. Even though he was talking to Billy, the boy couldn't understand a word, because everything felt shaking. He wanted to open his eyes and see his mom but now his leg started to really hurt and he was crying and he had no idea what was going on. He was still holding onto his notebook then, he just lost the pen.

It didn't take long until sirens got there. By then the man that pulled Billy out of the car had handed him over to a woman that covered him with a blanket, even if it was way too warm for a blanket. She made him look over a cliff at the ocean and kept talking to him. Behind him was noise and Billy knew something went terribly wrong. He just knew and not only because his leg felt weird and he couldn't really walk.

The woman then passed him over to a young man dressed in wight that put him into a car. Billy asked about his mother for the first time but the man just told him, he could see her when they got there. Billy didn't believe him. Because his mother had been in the car, so she must be behind him now. Why couldn't he see her?

Billy recognized the place they drove to. It was the hospital. He once spent the night because he had a fewer but this was at least a year ago. He thought they would probably take care of his leg and they did. They also called his father and Billy was afraid he would be angry. Because Billy was still grounded. He wasn't at first though. He hugged Billy when he got there and looked at cast around Billy's leg. Billy told him he was sorry. Neil told him, this didn't matter now. Billy didn't understand what he meant until later.

Billy's father disappeared for some time and he looked different when he returned. Paler than before. Billy remembered the expression because he'd never seen it on his father's face before. Only after Billy asked him if he could see his mom, his father's face changed back into that grim look from before and he said, Billy couldn't. Billy cried after that. He was angry too. He didn't understand why his father wouldn't let him see his mom. And then his father left again and Billy couldn't follow because he wasn't allowed to walk. It was the evening when a nurse came and told him that his mother died in the accident. Billy didn't believe her at first. How could she have died? That accident wasn't as bad. The nurse stayed with him and told him, what happened. She told him that his father could take him home in the morning. Billy said he couldn't get home with him. The nurse told him he had to.

Later in the night when the nurse left and the room was dark, Billy started ripping pages out of his notebook and shredding them into pieces one after another. Because those memories felt bad with his mom gone and he didn't want to be reminded of that anymore. He even ripped apart the hard edges, throwing everything into a trash bin. He couldn't sleep that night. Couldn't sleep for a few nights. But he cried a lot.

Like the nurse said, Billy's father picked him up the next morning and brought him home. They didn't talk about this and Billy didn't ask him. It took months until Neil told him for the first time that this was all his fault for ignoring what his father had said. Billy already knew that before and it felt like he deserved it, even when his father hit him for the first time. Because if he wouldn't have brought home bad grades, his mom wouldn't have been in the car on that day. Neil taught him a lot about respect and responsibility after that, even if Billy felt this was too late. There wasn't anyone he would be saving with this because his mom was gone. 

A few years later Neil married Susan and she moved in with her daughter Maxine. Billy didn't hate them but the fact that they weren't his mom. And he hated growing up without her and then leaving California because this place reminded him of her so much. And he wished he had more left of her when they moved, like the notebook he destroyed that night. The only thing Neil allowed Billy to keep was the necklace. Billy hated the world and the fact that the only truly good person he ever knew was gone. 

Billy would never have thought that moving to shit-town in the middle of nowhere would end up showing him that not everything had to be bad and maybe he didn't deserve to go through all this. 

***********

"Billy, you alright?"

Billy was sweaty and his heart was racing when he woke up to a couple of eyes facing him, most prominently those big brown eyes of his boyfriend.

That weird girl was standing next to him, her hair a curly mess and she was watching him as Billy sat up, trying to forget about reliving this terrible accident in his dream just a minute ago.

"Sad.", is what the girl just said.

"What?", Steve turned around to her and put a hand on her shoulder. 

"She's pretty.", the girl said, her darting eyes still looking at Billy. "Her necklace."

Billy froze. He'd seen this girl do a lot of weird things but being able to look inside his head and reading him like an open book topped that.

Maybe when Steve asked him to spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods to watch over a girl because that police guy was out of town, actually agreeing wasn't the best idea. They had been crashing on some old matrasses on the floor while the girl slept in her room. 

"What is she talking about?" Now Steve looked at Billy just as concerned as El did a second before.

"Just a bad dream about my mom.", Billy mumbled. "I'm fine. Now let's go back to sleep."

"Billy?" Billy had just tried to lay back down when the girl said his name. He looked at her, probably with the same curious yet a bit puzzled face, Steve was pulling right now. "It's not your fault." 

Eleven went back into her room after that and didn't witness Billy literally shaking and Steve just holding him and telling him it's okay. Billy had no idea what just happened or how she knew, but he was glad that Steve was there and he would do anything to make sure he wouldn't lose him.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed reading, please take the time and leave kudos and a comment. :)


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